Bounce-onium!

The concept I came up with was "reverse pinball" where YOU ARE THE BALL and you are trying to "escape" through the bottom of the playfield. In the game, you star as a lowly laboratory mouse who wants to escape the clutches of the evil Professor Kitty von Doom.

The professor has invented a top secret formula called Bounce-onium that he has given to the mouse in his lab which makes any animal able to bounce like a ball! Using his new powers, the mouse decides to make an escape attempt.

Use the arrow keys (or A and D) to give the "mouse" (ball) some English - like tilting the table. Try to grab the red security key-card and then touch the red door labelled "authorized staff only" to make a break for it!

Programmed using HTML5 in javascript. Uses box2dweb and soundmanager2. Sound effects created by BSFXR. All art was drawn by hand using paper and markers, scanned and tinted in Photoshop.

This game runs at 480x800 resolution because it is designed to work on smartphones. It runs wonderfully on my Android HTC Desire Z phone, for example. If you have a non-HD (low resolution) monitor it will be too big to fit. For example, it definitely won't fit on older netbook screens which only have 600 pixels of height. I hope to make a smaller version for the people who still have low def screens. Might just produce a half-size version.

Currently does not work in IE. What a huge surprise. Try Chrome, or pretty much anything other than IE.

If anyone cares to test the game on their phone I'd be most grateful to hear whether it works. Thanks!

About the game: Good concept, you only need to polish the art assets, and maybe get some level designers to help you (it's somewhat bizarre that Mathias thinks it's too hard, and others think that it's too easy, myself being on the second camp)

Levels were pretty easy, but the idea is oddly compelling. I played until the one level started looping. It took me several levels for me to realize I was playing the same one over and over again. lol!

Thanks for all the kind words, people! There is a new post-compo version with over 25 levels, along with far better level design including: SPIKES! LAVA! LASERS!

The game is actually an Android app and runs really smoothly on my HTC Desire Z (and this is why it is so big: the resolution of my phone is 480x800). I'm planning tomake a smaller version for people without HD monitors. I'll be posting version 1.1 by the end of the week - finally it will be a more fully fleshed out game as this compo editing is admittedly rather sparse with only 5 levels.

Nice job! I actually like the bite-sized levels, and I could definitely see people playing a couple at a time on their phone as they're waiting in line, on the bus, etc. As people have said, it would be even better if it had enemies/traps/danger to avoid or destroy, but you probably already knew that!

And this is just me thinking out loud, but how hard would it be to create a level editor to allow players to trade levels?

Great game! It was fun to figure out how to control the mouse, and to get bounced around like crazy. I agree that some kind of timer or hazards could make it more difficult. That said, it might get too hard since it's difficult to predict/control which direction the bumpers will shoot you (at least, I find it to be so compared to something like Peggle). Great sounds, fun idea, good job!

To be honest, I didn't like your game... I don't exactly know why, but some things come to my mind: the same level can either be too easy or too hard, just because I have the chance to aim correctly without the physics preventing me to do what I want or because the mouse bounces off everything at a high speed; what's more, the number of level is not enough (well, it could have been if there had been something that really changed between them, I don't know...) and the last level looping forever is no fun. Moreover, the game can actually play and win by itself, mainly because the is no way to lose (it seems you changed that on your post-compo version, which I believe is a good thing) ! I don't find the game in its LD48 state very innovative as it's just some variation of pinball with a reduced set of possible interactions, and the theme Escape just seems not to be there because there's no way you could fail to escape as said above... The graphics give me a mixed feeling as they are both colorful and grey, which kind of means both happy and sad to me: the sad grey part is just too serious compared to the cat/mouse story which made me smile. The sound is quite good, a background music would maybe have helped to keep my attention on the game though (a dynamic music would have encouraged me to keep playing and not let the mouse do its thing alone, which also comes from the little control you have on the game).

I give you a four start community rating mainly because of your huge implication in the whole Ludum Dare event, but not five because you didn't really post much related to your game during the compo: an "engine done" and a "game finished" message are not sufficient in my opinion. You could have made bigger progress reports with development screenshots (you only posted one) and maybe a timelapse.

Nevertheless, you made a playable game and that's already something which deserves respect !

If I missed something which seems important to you and may affect the way I rated your game, do not hesitate to tell me as I don't like giving LD games a bad score, in particular when they don't deserve it. If you found my message rude, that wasn't my goal as I hate nothing more than comments which don't help to make things better.

PS: I think that the post-compo version with spikes, lava and stuff like that must be much better than this but sadly for you that's not what we have to rate here...

difficulty curve is pretty spastic, especially given how little is there.

Also, for future reference, 800 pixels of height is more than most *present* laptops have. This thing came with a 2 gig vid card and the screen still only goes up to 768, and that res seems pretty normal regardless of screensize lately, for reasons I don't fully understand since my last lappy had "screw HD and make it cry in the corner" for a screen res. : | So I couldn't see the bottom of this~ but still figured it out pretty quick. .-.

Very nice take on pinball and original theme interpretation. Easy but addictive. Sounds get old quick though. I think it may have needed more features or at least levels. Should have had an ending (and closure) than same level loop.

Great idea for a game. I enjoyed it. I could imagine this being really fun if it had a few more levels.
Quick note, a restart button would help a lot. I got stuck on one of the levels and it took me ages to get back to the top.

I'm a little bit confused atm. I played this game shortly after the compo and it was a different experience (easy, few levels, as the first few commenters mentioned). Is this a different post-compo version?
Will hold my rating until a clarification.